Polaris, by Jack McDevitt

I recently read Polaris, by Jack McDevitt. (This is McDevitt's web page.) Polaris was published in 2004 by Ace Books, of New York. McDevitt won the Nebula award for Seeker, a book with the same setting, and main characters, but later in time in McDevitt's sub-creation.

I don't usually give away the plots of books, but, in this case, I'm going to.

The Polaris was a spaceship, and it was used for a flight of a few important people. The purpose of the flight was to view the collision of a star with another object, from as close as safely possible. The Polaris was found, after the collision, but no passengers (nor the pilot) were ever found, in spite of a thorough search.

Alex Benedict, dealer in artifacts of various kinds, and his associate, Chase Kolpath (Chase is female) obtain some material from the Polaris, and become interested in what happened, 60 years after the disappearance. To cut to the chase (sorry!) they find out that the people aboard the Polaris are still alive.

There is an important ethical dilemma in this book. More than one, in fact. One is whether people who are convinced that overpopulation is a potential disaster have the right to take drastic action to prevent it. Another is whether, if a way to prolong human life tenfold is found, it is right to withhold that knowledge. Another is whether it is right to punish criminals with a "mindwipe," which involves removing their memories, and most of their personality, as opposed to sentencing them to death, or to life in prison. And the last one, which is raised in this, and two other of McDevitt's books about Alex Benedict (one of them may not have Chase Kolpath) is whether it's right to look for artifacts of the past for profit, as opposed to letting them be. (If there was no profit motive, would anyone ever look? Would any artifacts at all be preserved for the public? Should they be?) The answers to all of these questions are difficult, and McDevitt offers no easy answers.

McDevitt is a good writer. There is some real science in the book, and the characters seem real enough, too (even the avatars -- computer-generated constructs, based on what is known of an absent person, or a dead one). Much of the book is a murder mystery, or an attempted murder mystery. Someone has been trying to kill Benedict and Kolpath. Who is it, and why?

Even though Rimway, the planet Benedict and Kolpath are based on, is distant from earth, and it is a few millenia in our future, there is some minor recognition of God. ("God willing," for example, on page 119)

Thanks for reading.

Seeker, by Jack McDevitt

"Margolia is a world of gleaming cities and impossible architecture. Its citizens enjoy a life of absolute leisure. (How they'd stand it isn't explained.)" Jack McDevitt, Seeker. New York: Ace, 2006, p. 108.

Seeker won the Nebula award for 2006. I try to read all the Nebula award books. As usual, I'll try to avoid giving away the plot, but muse a bit about some aspects of the book.

This is McDevitt's web page. It includes chapter 14 of the book.

The front cover quotes Stephen King, on McDevitt: "The logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke." In other words, King believes that the most important part of McDevitt's stories is the science. I generally prefer Ursula K. Le Guin's writing, where the most important part of the stories is the people. Clarke invented the synchronous orbiting relay satellite, fictionally. However, let's not forget that Le Guin, in spite of her concern for her characters, invented the ansible, also fictionally. Both are concerned with communication. McDevitt's people are OK. They are more than just cardboard. The protagonist in Seeker is Chase Kolpath, a former space pilot. She is now the assistant to Alex Benedict, who finds, or trades, valuable artifacts. I haven't read the previous books in this series, A Talent for War and Polaris, but I believe the first of these is written as a memoir by Alex. The second and third are written as if by Chase. She is more than a Watson to Alex's Holmes -- she has many of the adventures, and some of the ideas.

There are lots of possible artifacts in Chase's world, since it's about 9,000 years in our future, and humans are living on hundreds of planets. Rimway is the name of her planet. It has almost no crime. Criminals have their brains wiped -- their personality is mostly destroyed, and they are given, as it were, another start in life. Most everyone has an AI, an artificial intelligence, to deal with routine matters, even some non-routine ones. Simulated people take many of the service roles, such as restaurant waiters.

One question I always have, when entering such a world, is "how does the author treat religion?" McDevitt almost totally ignores it, but does include this:
It was a religious ceremony. A priest requested the blessings of the Almighty on the happy couple, and led them in their vows. The best man produced the ring, Adam slipped it on her finger, she waltzed into his arms, and they kissed. p. 77.

Who is getting married isn't important here. McDevitt does assume that there will be some religion, probably Christianity, even in the far future, and that it will have some importance in the lives of at least some people. That's more than many science fiction authors have done.

The quote also shows a weakness in McDevitt's work. Much of what people do and are, their customs and habits, read as if they haven't changed in hundreds of lightyears and thousands of years. That strikes me as very unrealistic. Surely the marriage ceremony would have changed a lot in that time! I know -- if McDevitt had changed everything as much as it's probably going to change, the plot would have gotten lost in all of those societal changes. And it's unrealistic to expect any author to be able to extrapolate changes in every aspect of how we eat, entertain ourselves, how we are named, etc., into the future.

God also appears in this famous quote (famous in the sense that it has been remembered for millennia, in McDevitt's fictional world):
We are leaving this world forever, and we intend to go so far that not even God will be able to find us. p. 133.

One technological extrapolation is avatars -- it is possible to take what is known about someone, even someone long dead, and produce a projected 3-D view of that person. The projection is able to converse, with ideas more or less like the original person would have, depending on how much is known about the original.

How do we treat the relics of our past? We plunder them, we hoard them, we exhibit them in museums, we profit from them, we show them off without understanding them, we casually trash them. That is a central theme of this book, and it is well worth thinking about.

McDevitt is a good read. I had a hard time putting the book down by the time I got to about page 250 (out of 373). There were two previous Chase Kolpath books, A Talent for War and Polaris. I hope to read them.

Thanks for reading.